


ideas above their station

by mageofmind (renegadeartist)



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: But I can’t think of what they are right now, Dr Nyarlathotep, Experimental Style, Nonbinary Character, Time Lord Victorious, Uhhh there’s probably other tags I should add, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 15:09:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14876111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renegadeartist/pseuds/mageofmind
Summary: There's something wrong with Time. It's the Doctor's job to figure out what it is, because no one else has any idea what's going on. Predictably, it all goes horribly wrong.





	ideas above their station

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cosmickaiju](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmickaiju/gifts).



There is something wrong with Time.

Of course, things are usually wrong with Time, what with people hurling themselves at the Vortex at all (relative) hours of the day, causing paradoxes and knifing past-future-nonexistent selves. They can feel all of this, of course. Small vibrations in the paper thin tapestry that holds this universe’s timestreams together. Some are louder, some are softer, some screech and some sing. Usually, they can ignore it, block it out with activity or the more normal type of sound, music, speech, senseless babble and background noise.

But this is different, because it grinds salt in the wound their Ship left behind, it screeches like metal-on-metal on their ears. It makes their teeth rattle in their skull and it’s all they can do to turn the doorknob and push into the office.

He’s wrong, because their common sense tells them that they say him die, saw his timeline twist and break, paradox rippling into the future, pulling at them as they used to be. But he’s there in front of them, his timeline stable, fine, as it should be, as they’ve made it. He quickly finishes his phone call and raises an eyebrow at them.

“Hello, Doctor. I can’t say I’m not happy to see you, but usually people knock,” Peter Tyler, current head of Torchwood says mildly. He’s really come into his role as head of an organization that deals with extraterrestrials. That is to say he’s perfected the placid smile that gives nothing away, the surreptitious glances and calculations that run perpetually behind his eyes.

They’re nothing more than a fledgling organization with ideas above their station. Research went into the dimension canon for years, putting everything to the wayside. Now that they’re on staff - despite their misgivings - things aren’t exactly moving forward, more like sideways, to the left just enough to grate on their superiors, but there’s progress.

“There’s something wrong with Time,” they say, and it’s not right, but it’s not wrong, either. It’s the only way they know how to express it to these pitiful humans while it knocks at their head, chips away at their attention, their sanity.

Pete’s other eyebrow jumps up to join its twin. “Is that right?”

They grit their teeth and put their hands flat on the wood grain - towering trees, decades old, cut down, torn apart, reassembled - of his desk. “Yes. You need to put together a team to handle it.” Not that they can do much. They’re only humans. But there are other agents, aliens who washed up on earth and had nowhere to go, who offered their skills to the institute. A few of them are even telepathic. They try not to think of themself like that. It doesn’t quite work.

“I- this is rather short notice-“

And they want to pull out their hair, nervous energy making their form waver. There’s anger there, too. Buried deep for the sake of not pulling themself apart, not making this unbearable. They’ve blocked so much off, refused to look, but it still grates, knocks against each other like icebergs, chipping off a piece at a time and pitching it into the sea. It’s not a permanent fix, but it’s all they can do at the moment.

Time has ratcheted the temperature up, and the ice is melting.

“ _Time_ ,” they say again, emphasizing it, trying to drive it home in the human’s pitiful linear head, “Is unstable. It doesn’t do this on its own. There’s someone messing with it- making it- it-“ they don’t have the words in plain English, can’t wrestle their thoughts together well enough to describe the pulling-pushing-tearing-bleeding of the Web. They can’t make him understand. And if he doesn’t understand, then he won’t help.

“Forget it.” They turn to leave. They can deal with this themself. They don’t need any humans to look after them. There are things more important now.

“Wait, Doctor-“ he tries, going so far as to stand up and stretch out a hand.

They’ve already shut the door behind them, rattling the wall. It’s only when they’re halfway out of the building that they realize they forgot to use limbs a human could see.

* * *

  
She comes down the stairs with socks that pad her footsteps. They still know she’s there, because the vibrations in the Web change pitch, her timeline twists and curls, smells something like cinnamon and woodfire. They don’t want her down here, right now. They want to nudge her timeline away, but she’s already talking and their concentration is whisked away like smoke.

“What’re you doing?” Rose asks, and the radio they had been fiddling with slips through - through - their fingers and crashes to the ground.

They feel frustration bubble up in them. Nothings going right, the air vibrates around them, there’s too much noise.

“Nothing,” they grind out. Decorum is the last thing on their mind. Most of their attention is focused on keeping their form together, a collection of all too concrete, all too real flesh and blood, that wants to insist on existing, even as their nature rebels against the idea of being confined to three dimensions.

They pick up the radio that’s been gutted and rewired sixty seven times before and try to ignore how their hands shake.

“Dad told me you came to see him today. Stormed out before you explained properly.” They don’t respond, words stuck in their head, not working right. So many things not working right. Their foot taps on the ground for lack of anything better to do. She frowns, they can hear it. She walks down the last few steps and stands in the basement, what’s supposed to be their bedroom but really looks more like a mad scientists’ laboratory. They think it’s appropriate. “Doctor, please.”

Words click back together. Distraction works in tandem with mania and they jerk up from where they had been sitting. Maybe she’ll understand.

“Someone - something - is messing with Time.” Her eyes widen, far from an appropriate reaction, but closer than her father. “They’re coming, closer and closer-“ and they hadn’t realized that was what it was, until they said it out loud, why it got worse with every passing second-minute-hour-day “-and I don’t know what they want, but they’re tearing it, the Web, and it’s bleeding, and I’m alone here, keeping it up, and soon they’re going to tear into me.”

Rose knows there are other time active species besides Time Lords, knows in broad strokes and figurative language and a brief moment of eternity what the Web of Time is and what it means. She is perhaps the closest a human this or any side of the Void will get to understanding why this is very bad indeed.

“What can we do?” she asks, trying to school her voice into a smooth, emotionless cadence, and only barely failing.

They don’t know yet. There’s too much noise in their head, too much picking at their being, trying to string them out. They’re spindled so tightly they’re afraid they’ll accidentally cause a gravitational anomaly. Wouldn’t be the first time.

“We figure out who’s responsible and we stop them.”

Easier said than done.

* * *

  
Rose proves to be invaluable. Of course, they knew that before, but its a reaffirmation, a hand on their shoulder, a linear mind to keep them on track. They’re as grateful for it as they are annoyed at being corralled. They feel limited, restrained, but they keep their head ducked in three dimensions as much as they can, because there’s a storm in Time, wind howling and worldlines snapping, hissing.

It’s no species they know, because they ran through a mental list of every time sensitive, time active, and Vortex native species they could remember. The list is not as long as one might think. None of the species fit. It’s something else. Something unique to this universe.

They can taste the ozone in the air, can almost-but-not-quite tell where they’re trying to break through. Torchwood’s stolen technology can’t detect it. Another reason to do this themself.

Rose comes up with the idea of the beacon. If they can’t find the entry point, they’ll just drag it towards them. They put it into action, cobble together the technology with bits and pieces of flotsam and jetsam that Torchwood had gathered over the years. Being the daughter of the boss man has its perks, Rose had said with a smile.

The beacon stands barely five feet, a strange tower made of television bits, transceivers, and radio dishes. There’s other tech in there, too. Fifty first century Vortex Manipulators, thirty second century chronotransievers. Other things that absolutely should never come into contact with each other. Tech that shouldn’t exist in this time period, much less this planet. They’ve stopped caring.

The whole thing is wrapped in anomalies and paradoxes. It only adds to the signal, a pulsing and constant noise, an artificial heartbeat. Rose asks, “Is it working?” and they realize she cannot hear it.  
  
“Yes,” they say, something blocking their throat. The world wobbles, like tarmac under an unrelenting sun. Their head pulses with the tower, and they try to stay standing. Rose offers a hand and they take it after a moments hesitation. “It’s working.”  
  
Physically, they’re in the middle of an abandoned warehouse, one of Torchwood’s. That isn’t overly important, as space seems to warp and twist, groaning painfully.

Relatively, it doesn’t matter how long it takes, because the entry point of the things that have been doing this splinters, cracks like glass but doesn’t shatter, exists ana, pulls back kata, moves forward alterwards. A hand that doesn’t look like a hand but contains stardust and white-gold time pushes through, and there is a being standing there, has always stood there, will never stand there, and it _burns_ .

There’s a shout from Rose, a chittering, hissing, off key warble of _noise_ from the thing, in a language they don’t speak but they understand anyways.

 _Stand down_ , is the understood meaning. _Force will be applied if necessary._

And then, they realize why it’s all affecting them so terribly. Why every moment it makes sends another chunk of ice splashing into the ocean.

These things are  _looking for them._ They are the target, the anomaly, the _threat_ that these things are looking for.

It realizes they know a second later and there’s a movement and-

-the strings holding their physical body up sn

a

p

.

They only just manage to keep a grip, prevent themself from being swept away into the fabric of Time, get lost in the forest of chronontrees and vortisaurs. They can’t feel their knees hit the ground, can’t see out of their eyes as they stare wide at the being that pushes relentlessly forward, but they know it happens. They know that this was deliberate, that the being holds a device that looks like no sword they’ve ever seen and isn’t one, really, but that sliced through the connecting tissue that held their physical and extra dimensional form together all the same. Something these thugs use to cut up time sensitives and extra dimensional beings into ribbons.

They don’t go down so easily, but it’s so loud in their head and-

There’s something like unconsciousness, but really it’s preoccupation, because they can’t focus on anything but searing handprints on their body, time starved and pitiful, dragging the rest of them along into the Vortex for the first time in so long and-

(they move through molasses, things whispering in their ears and cotton stuffing in their mind, they can’t think or do anything because they’re too focused on keeping themself within three dimensions, or as close as they can get, because there’s danger, danger, she’s in danger, there’s something wrong with time there’s something)

-and they wake up, but it’s not really waking up, and Rose hovers over them. She look-feels panicked, bitter and sharp on their tongue. They think they might have too many limbs, or too many eyes, but it was worse when the walls of the universe closed, when they were trapped on one side. When her bond was severed and they felt themself split open, scream on planes no other being could reach, not anymore, beg no, no, no, come back please-

They’re unstable. They realize this distantly as the currents of the Vortex rock them back and forth. They think that these things purposefully whittle away reason. Something shakes their physical form and they snap out, grab it, and realize -

It’s only the human. Rose. She’s saying something. They can’t understand her. Words pour out of them, and she can’t understand them.

A pause. A moment. It’s snatched away by time winds, but they manage to collect themself all the same. They don’t think they use their mouth, but they manage to say, “Time station. We’re on a time station.”

It rocks in the Vortex, almost like a lullaby, the hum of something lost, but it’s the wrong melody, not even the same key. She was fluid and golden and amazing. This is cold, stretched, abused. Someone has been messing around with Time with no regard for the sanctity of the Web, without the know how to change the laws of the universe.

(Ideas above their station.)

Rose asks a question. They know what it is, a request for information about their situation. They can’t give it, because a door opens -is-was-will-be-open- and one of the beings steps in.

They are in a room, something like a cell, bare and clinical. There’s not enough room for any of them sparing maybe Rose, limited as she is to the lower dimensions. The being- the thing- the alien stands tall, with one of the not-swords held loosely in its hand.

It’s stretched, threaded, and smug. It doesn’t have eyes, not really, but it sees, and they can feel it staring at them. It thinks it’s won.

It says something in that language, the one that wrestles with the Vortex, tries to dominate Time, snaps it apart and throws the jagged pieces at them like it's some sort of masterpiece. They understand what it says. _Time Lord. You will be still._

It’s not hard to figure out that it doesn’t actually have any proper idea what that means. It’s something they found while tearing through the threads, a word, a thought, a concept. A remnant of world-timeline-universe hopping, of a War and an Enemy and something different than them, more powerful. It scares these aliens out of their wits.

 **_It should_ ** , they say, without a mouth, in their own language that has shaped worlds and physics and universes, tamed the time winds and rode on its back.

Anger. Under that, fear. It doesn’t know what to do with them, or with Rose. Their species name is a signature in Time, a point tacked on sloppily and put on a pedestal like a work of art. It is their attempt at a fixed point, their attempt at saying _our existence is fixed and cannot be altered_.

It’s laughable. They don’t know why they were scared of what these things could do. They’re barely worth a glance, they could tear them down without a second thought.

(But they won’t because-

 _Why not?_ )

It hisses at them. They find their hands on the timelines, twisting and pulling and-

Something white hot and forged in Time is plunged through their chest and they hear themself scream. These aliens who think of themselves as Lords of Time in their own right -

(they couldn’t be farther from the truth, they don’t understand, can’t comprehend something more powerful than them, and it scares them, terrifies them, it)  
  
-leaves them with something like a sword but that doesn’t look like any sword in existence lanced through their chest.

They can only laugh as ochre-orange-cherry-red-viscous something drips from the wound that doesn’t exist and from their mouth and onto the floor. They can only laugh and laugh, because if they stop they think they will snap.

There are hands on them again. Moving them. It’s awfully linear, awfully familiar, being dragged down a corridor and into a sterile room. These aliens want to cut them open, learn their secrets, and then leave them for dead, drifting forever in the Vortex. These aliens want to take their place as -

What?

There’s something, it draws things closer, the universe revolves around it, laws are formed around it. A lynchpin.

The aliens pull the not-sword out of their chest and it drips on the ground. The liquid steams and stains the floor a color that humans couldn’t comprehend. Knives made of the same material as the not-sword rips into them, and they realize something very important-

(they are the only one left)

They only realize that Rose has been taken too when a scream tinged gold rips through the station, rips through them. 

They jerk up, emotions warring in their mind, not quite touching each other or even touching them, but they’re so loud and they buzz so much, it’s like they’re full of the bees that disappeared. Pain is muffled by panic. The alien scientists step away from them. They think they’re protected, somehow. Time sterile suits. It’s only barely harder to rip through than wet cardboard.

There’s not-quite carnage around them, these beings who think they are Time’s masters lay on the floor, curled up or splayed out, all dim and almost lifeless. They ignore them, because there’s more important matters at hand. They take the not-sword that leans against the wall and slices the timelines of the aliens in ha  lf.

There’s a door in front of them, deadlocked and time locked, made of something that’s supposed to dampen sound, signals, senses. They step through it. The not-sword is dragged behind them, leaving trail viscous maybe-blood on the floor.

One of the beings thats name sounds like a grating, off tune piano chord, spots them. They think it’s supposed to be a guard. It tries to stop them. It doesn’t matter how. They grab the collection of sticks that make up its timeline and they  
  
s  
nap

them

and it leaves behind nothing, because they know how to smooth other the paradoxes and smudges that never-have-beens stain the Web with.  
  
More try to stop them.  
  
non e  
  
tr  
y  
  
to st  
op  
  
them  
  
in a time station drifting empty.  
  
Rose is there, somewhere. They pry at the universe with sharp fingers and te            ar it open. They reach through and grab the human that still has remnants of eternity in her blood, and things twist, turn, snap, and they shove their whole being at the universe, push against the timeline and suddenly they are  
  
sitting in a cafe.  
  
She chitters inanely at them, something about her day. Words slide past them. A tack freshly removed from Time falls to oblivion.  
  
The universe shifts, compensates. They cut the aberrant timeline off, let it fall away into nothing.

(They make sure there is no trace of the aliens left.)

She doesn’t need to know what happened. She doesn’t even remember, because weighed against every measurement that matters, it didn’t.  
  
They smile at her, more teeth than should be possible. It’s something they didn’t quite realize before.  
  
The Laws of Time are theirs. No one to watch, to keep them in check. No reason to be in check, in a pocket of a bubble of a multiverse.

-and they realize something very important. They are the lynchpin. They keep this universe up, make the rules, and weave the Web of Time.

And the universe will obey them.

**Author's Note:**

> Lima Syndrome’s influence on this is fairly obvious, Whoops. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly reccomend it. It’s by thevoiceoflightcity, and you should check out eir other works if you like esoteric nonsense and dr nyarlathotep content. Also, this was a gift for cosmickaiju, who also has Very good content (once they get around to posting it lmao) so give their account a peek too if you’re feeling like it.


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